


Little Boxes

by Mosca



Category: Six Feet Under
Genre: F/F, In Public, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-12
Updated: 2012-09-12
Packaged: 2017-11-14 02:45:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/510484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mosca/pseuds/Mosca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Claire absolutely must tell this to David right now, so she makes him a sandwich.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Boxes

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AO3 repost of a fic originally written in 2001, when Six Feet Under was in its first season. Both girls in the story are 17. Luna and k beta read this.

David had been hoping to spend some time alone in the kitchen with his misery, but Claire was already there, surveying the fridge, filling the room with chill air and the aroma of leftovers. He moved with the spooky silence he'd perfected as a funeral director, hoping she wouldn't notice him. She'd find her pudding cup or her orange juice and be completely wrapped up in her teenage universe. He'd just blend into the wallpaper.

"God, David, don't _do_ that," she shrieked, as much as Claire was capable of shrieking, which wasn't much.

"Oh, sorry, I--"

"I was gonna make a sandwich. Want one?"

How much money do you want, Claire? Or is there something else you need me not to tell Mom? "Oh-- um, sure. Thanks.

She shut the fridge door with her knee and lifted an armful of food items onto the counter. "David?"

"Yes?"

"How did you know you were gay?"

"Claire--"

"No. Really. I want to know. Did you, like, always know, or was it like some epiphany that rained down from the heavens?"

He paused for a brief, silent intercessory prayer. Please, God, let Mom walk in right now. Start an earthquake. Anything."

No luck. "Um... I guess... I knew for a long time that I wasn't normal, but I didn't figure out why until I was about your age."

"Oh. Okay. I mean, I was just wondering." She brought him his sandwich and a glass of milk. Sometimes Claire reminded him so much of Mom, and it wasn't just the hair. For example, this sandwich, cut into triangular halves with an unfortunately phallic pickle between them. Bologna on white bread with mayonnaise and iceberg lettuce: the great American sandwich. It was nice of her, he couldn't help thinking.

"Because this _thing_ happened," Claire said.

"A thing?" His mouth was full.

"The kind of thing that happens, and you need to tell somebody, like, immediately, or you'll explode. Like, Rico would spend weeks scraping bits of me off the kitchen floor and then gluing me back together for the viewing."

"You can tell me if you want to."

"Okay. But you can't tell Mom."

"I never tell Mom about anything you do," he said. "I don't tell Mom about anything _anyone_ does."

She seemed to let that one go. Second sandwich made, she began stuffing food back into the fridge, then dropped the cutting board and knives into the sink. She carried her sandwich and milk-- identical to David's, right down to the suggestive pickle placement-- over to the table and sat down next to him. "So. Um. There's this girl Parker that I'm kind of friends with."

David realized that, in her seventeen-year lifespan, Claire had never mentioned being friends with anyone, not even kind of. She seemed to pride herself on it: the Friendless Wonder, needing no one but herself. It had made her a pretty bizarre second grader.

She continued. "So I gave her a ride home today," Claire said. "Like normally she drives herself, but she'd spent the night with this guy and by lunch he wasn't even speaking to her."

David decided not to dig deeper into that one.

"And there was this accident on Ventura, so we were stuck in traffic for, like, forever." Yes indeed, she was Nate's sister, in case anyone doubted it. "So we talked about stuff."

*****

"So is there, like, anything you _haven't_ done?" Claire asked, glaring at the Acura in front of her.

"Oh my God, Claire, the amount of things I haven't done is depressing. I mean, when you think about it."

"No, I mean, sexually."

Parker bit her lip. "Well, yeah."

"Like what?"

"Um... Nobody's ever shat on me."

Claire giggled. "Ew."

"I've never had sex with a dead guy."

"Bigger ew."

"I've never had sex at school, unless blow jobs count."

"Oh my _God_... um, I mean, I think blow jobs count."

"Okay. Never mind. Uh... I've never been with a girl."

Claire's eyes went wide. She took her hands off the wheel. "Really?"

"Yeah really. Why?"

"No, it's just-- I thought you'd tried everything. I mean, everything reasonably normal."

"Well, I haven't. I mean, _you've_ done things _I_ haven't. I've never sucked a guy's toes in the back of a hearse."

*****

"You sucked somebody's toes in the back of a _hearse_?" David interrupted.

"It was _my_ hearse," Claire said in her tiniest kid-sister voice.

"Still, Claire. That's--" That was something else he was going to have to try before he died. Sex in a hearse.

"So can I finish the story?"

"Whatever," sighed David, getting up to rinse his dishes off and put them in the dishwasher.

*****

"It wasn't that big of a deal, believe me," Claire said.

"Maybe you should turn somewhere and take side streets," said Parker.

"Huh?"

"Because the traffic is, like, not moving."

There was a small residential street a few yards up on the right, and when the traffic inched forward again, Claire turned onto it. "It's probably, like, a dead end," she said. But it wasn't: it was an endlessly winding subdivision, the kind with sprawling pastel houses set far back from roads named after trees. "Oh, shit, we're _never_ gonna get out of here," said Claire.

"No, wait," Parker said. "I went to a party around here once. There's, like, five different ways out of it."

"If you say so." Claire steered the car along the gentle curves, turning right or left more or less at random. There might have been five ways out, but she wasn't finding any of them. "'Little boxes on the hillside,'" she hummed. "'And they're all made out of ticky-tacky, and they all look just the same.'"

"Huh?"

"Oh, um, just this song my brother taught me when I was a little kid."

"Which one? The gay one or the one with the fucked-up girlfriend?"

"Um. The gay one."

*****

"You _outed_ me to this person?"

"I had to drive her home from that Sierra Crossroads thing. She knows, like, everything about my life."

"That doesn't mean she has to know everything about _mine_."

"Don't worry. She's cool with it and everything."

"That's not the _point_ , Claire."

"Okay. God."

"Just get on with it."

*****

They came up on a construction site: someone was rebuilding, replacing a huge, obnoxious house with an even huger and more obnoxious house. "Pull over," said Parker.

"Why?"

"I wanna see what's inside."

"Oh, for--"

"No, really. Come on."

"You're _insane_ ," said Claire, pulling into the driveway.

It was the workmen's day off, or something, because the house was completely deserted. There was a full dumpster in the front. The house itself was finished, its arch-topped windows supported by rose-colored brick, but the inside walls were unpainted drywall studded with electrical wires and uncovered air-conditioning vents. It looked like a generic big house. The Platonic ideal of house. "We'll probably, like, fall through the floor," said Claire.

"No, we won't," Parker said, pulling Claire inside.

They wandered the empty rooms for a while. There was a marble-trimmed indentation in one of the rooms' walls. "God. Why does anyone need a fireplace in Southern California?" Claire said.

"My dad's got one at his place," said Parker. "You turn this switch, and the gas goes on. Whoosh."

"Cool," said Claire. "I mean, a major waste of our precious natural resources, but--"

"But S'mores."

"Yeah."

"When I was a kid, my dad would, like, try to win me over with S'mores. Like, 'I'm sorry you can't live with me in my big, beautiful mansion in Bel Air. Have some marshmallows.'"

"I think that's, like, everyone's family."

*****

"Claire?"

"What?"

"Is there any birthday cake left?"

"David. Not funny."

"No, I'm serious." He got up and opened the fridge. He found the cake, balanced carefully on one of the overloaded shelves, its frosting squished by Saran Wrap. Carrying it over to the table, he said, "Do you want a piece?"

"Weren't we saving it for Nate?" Claire said.

"It's my cake." Mom still insisted on throwing birthday parties for everyone. No, cancel your evening plans, it'll be a hot time in the Fisher house tonight. At least there had been cake. Bakery cake, because Mom was discovering her inner florist and therefore didn't have time to perfect the art of the layer cake. David hoped she'd given up that quest completely, for everyone's sake. 

Claire had gotten out the cake-cutter and a couple of plates. "Why does Mom have to put Saran Wrap on everything?"

*****

Claire was leading now, and she could feel Parker watching her. She spun on her heel. "What?"

"There's these sunspots reflecting off your hair. It's kind of trippy."

"Oh. Cool." Claire stared out the window, but the afternoon sun was so bright that her eyes burned. The house across the street looked like an overexposed photograph. "I'm actually kind of jealous of _your_ hair."

"Yeah? Really?" Parker had found a measuring tape, and she was playing with it, pulling out about a foot of tape and letting it rush back in. Whirr, snap.

"Yeah. Those curls."

"Oh my God, do you know how much stuff I have to put in my hair to keep it like this? Sometimes I think I should cut it all off."

"Don't do that," said Claire.

"Why not? I think I'd look good with a crew cut."

"Wait. I'm picturing that. Um... no. No, that wouldn't look good."

*****

"Claire, does this story have a point?"

"No, David, I just wanted to spend some quality time with my big brother." She mashed an already-deformed yellow frosting flower with her fork. It looked like it had stripes.

"Could you pick it up a little, then? Technically, there is work I could be doing."

*****

Parker was sitting on the floor, still playing with the measuring tape. Her back was to the window, and sunlight fell all around her, like this was an old painting, and Parker was the Virgin Mary. Virgin. Yeah. Claire started laughing.

"What?" said Parker. Whirr. Snap.

"Oh. Nothing."

"You do that a lot."

"I do what a lot?"

"Laugh for no reason."

"I've always got a _reason_ ," Claire said. "It's just not usually, like, a reason I can explain to other people."

"That's kind of cool."

"No, actually, it's embarrassing."

"No, really. It's like you've got this whole, like, universe in your head." Whirr. "So what was the joke?" Snap.

"I don't want to--"

"Come on. I promise I'll laugh."

"Umm..."

"Come _on_."

"Uh, the way the light was coming through the window, it just-- um, you looked like a painting."

"You're right. I don't know what you're talking about."

"See? I told you."

"I mean, I don't know what you're talking about, but it's, like, cool, because it's, like, part of Planet Claire. Like, I've never looked at someone and said, 'That person looks like a painting.' I don't even know how someone would look if they looked like a painting. That's really sad, isn't it?"

"No," Claire said. "That's, like, normal."

"Oh." Parker rested her chin in her hands.

"It's okay. That doesn't mean _you're_ normal or anything. You're one of the least normal people I know. Trust me."

"Thanks."

"I mean, I think there's different kinds of weird. Like, some people are so obviously weird that they can't hide it. People look at them and go, 'That's a weird person.' But then there's people who are normal on the outside, but underneath, they're, like, these bizarre, interesting people."

Silently, Parker stood and walked towards Claire. Gripping the tape measure with both hands, she leaned forward and kissed Claire on the lips.

Claire backed away, a little bit repulsed. "What did you do that for?"

*****

"This is starting to sound like a late-night movie on pay cable," David said. He was pressing his fork into the crumbs to pick them up from his plate.

"Shut up, Dave."

*****

"I don't know," Parker half-smiled. "To see if I could?"

"Well, you can't," said Claire. She looked around. "We should probably leave."

"Yeah."

"Well, okay then."

"I'm sorry," Parker said.

"It's okay."

"It's just that-- I don't have, like, actual friends. I have people that I, like, hang around with, but not _friend_ friends, you know? So, like, I don't really know what to do. With a real friend. Who I actually, like, give a shit about."

Claire smiled shyly. Strands of hair fell across her face like a shield. "No, totally. You just kind of freaked me out. Completely. Like, you should tell a person before you do something like that."

"Oh. Sorry."

"It's fine."

"So can I ask your permission to do something?"

"Yeah. Sure."

"Can I, um, kiss you again?"

"Yeah," said Claire. "Sure."

And Parker kissed Claire, and they were kissing. Parker dropped the tape measure. It clattered loudly and tumbled a few times before settling on the new wood floor. The sunlight was yellow and everywhere. The tape measure reflected a brilliant spot of it onto the ceiling. Claire stared at the spot, not wanting to close her eyes, because with the sun the way it was, it would be all red behind her eyes, like bleeding internal organs. She wanted to kick the tape measure and watch the spot scatter. She wanted not to deal with the reality that she was kissing the person who, in any normal universe, would be her best friend.

Claire fought reality in the usual way. She closed her eyes, and she was in one of those dreams where you're kissing somebody, but you don't know who you're kissing. She slid her hands up the back of the other person's shirt. This wasn't going to work, because Parker was wearing this stretchy green button-down shirt. In dreams, people don't wear clothes that are hard to get off. Unless they're impossible to take off. There's no middle ground.

There were a couple of options here, and the only one not guaranteed to end their friendship was to keep going.

Parker's bra clasped in the front. Claire spent what felt like about an hour trying to get the back undone before she figured this out. By the time Claire had it unclasped, Parker was backing away, unbuttoning her shirt. "Sorry," Claire said.

"No, I just hate that thing where you're making out and trying to take off each other's clothes and everything gets caught and tangled up. It's so, like, high school sex."

"We're in high school," said Claire. "Technically, all we can have is high school sex." She shrugged out of her cardigan and pulled her undershirt over her head.

****

"Claire."

"Yeah?"

"Claire, I get the idea."

"Okay, but--"

"Sorry, it's just that thinking about my little sister having sex is--"

"Disturbing?"

"Disturbing." He rubbed his nose. "So you did..."

"Have sex? Yes." Claire was fiddling with her hair. "I mean, maybe not in the traditional sense, but we had... yeah."

"And?"

"And what?"

"And are you going to..."

"Oh, God, I don't know," she said. "I mean, part of me hopes we don't, but..."

"You're going to break your mother's heart, you know."

"I've already broken her heart," said Claire. "Like, many times. Almost daily."

"No, really. You were her last hope for grandchildren."

"I am _so_ too young to even think about that."

"You're only a couple of years younger than Mom was when she got married," David said. "I think she harbors delusions that times have not changed."

"Well, whatever. Besides, you could have kids."

"Uh, yeah, I guess that's biologically true."

"No, I can totally see you. You and your loving husband, frolicking in the yard with kids and a dog..."

David smiled. Sometimes he could see that too. Most of the time he couldn't, but sometimes he could. "I don't know," he said, shaking his head.

"I guess nobody knows. I mean, how do you know? But it would be good if it was."

"Yeah," David said, "it would."

Claire stood. "Thanks," she said. She leaned towards David, and he could tell that she was getting ready to hug him. He got up, and she tossed her arms around him. It was awkward, but it stopped being awkward. He'd always hated being in the kind of family where it was rare and uncomfortable to hug his sister, even though it was comfortable to be part of that kind of family. "God, Claire, you have everything ahead of you," he said.

"God, David," she mocked him, "so do you." She kissed his cheek and skipped out of the kitchen. 

He had the room to himself. He wasn't sure he wanted it anymore, but he had it. He gathered the cake plates and carried them to the sink. If he had the whole world, that included the kitchen. And he could handle the kitchen.


End file.
